By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56565517
Transit - (2018)
Alright - I want to see more Christian Petzold films.
Transit is one I'd seen before, and remembered liking - but another dive in last night had it firming as a favourite of mine. Really strange in one regard - it's based on a novel which is set during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, but Petzold brings everything forward to right now, making the occupation a present-day affair. The historical details are unimportant - refugees are fleeing, crackdowns and "spring cleaning" are being implemented and our protagonist, Georg (Franz Rogowski) needs to find a way out. He happens upon the papers of a novelist who has recently committed suicide, and decides to steal his identity - but this causes complications when he meets the novelist's widow and her lover. A quote from Indiewire says this film is "like
Casablanca written by Kafka" - and it really does have a
Casablanca feel to it, with self-sacrifice, forbidden love, hidden identity and life under an occupying power being integral parts. The end has a real
Casablanca twist to it. But
Transit is much more than that - it's the psychological peculiarity of travelling from nowhere specific to nowhere specific, and having constantly changing scenery as your basic "home", plus the anxiety of waiting - whether it's waiting to depart, or waiting to die, these two things have a tangible similarity to each other. Franz Rogowski gives a fascinating performance of one refugee's flight - the stress, weariness and sense of defeat. To top all of that off, the ending is simply superb - those last few shots, and last lines, are perfect. Just like with
Phoenix, Petzold sure knows how to end a film in the most impactful and wonderful way. A great story, and great movie.
9/10
By The poster art can or could be obtained from the distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44294608
Chappie - (2015)
If James Cameron had of made
Short Circuit, it would have been pretty close to Neill Blomkamp's
Chappie - an action-oriented, CGI-infused science fiction film with lots of added cuteness. The cute aspect is the surprisingly adorable robot, whose A.I. will only work if it learns from experience, which means you see Chappie (Sharlto Copley) go through infancy, childhood, adolescence and so forth as gangsters try to fool (okay, I'm going to say "him" from now on) him into becoming an near-invincible crime machine. I love Chappie. The rest of the film is a little stultifying. Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver play characters that don't have all that much to them, and the story is a little threadbare - so Chappie's charm is the only thing it has going for it. I love Chappie, but I don't love
Chappie. Nice effects, action and so forth - a little too mainstream and Cameronesque. Not a
bad movie by any means though.
6/10